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Plants
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Plant Resistance against Bacterial and Fungal Pathogens: Mechanisms and Applications
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Plant Resistance against Bacterial and Fungal Pathogens: Mechanisms and Applications

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Protection and Biotic Interactions".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2025) | Viewed by 7976

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Ye Xia

E-Mail
Guest Editor
Department of Plant Pathology, College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA
Interests: molecular biology; plant pathology; phytopathology; plant disease resistance
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Chunquan Zhang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Agriculture and Applied Sciences, Alcorn State University, 1000 ASU Dr. #690, Lorman, MS 39096, USA
Interests: molecular biology; plant pathology; disease management

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue delves into the intricate mechanisms and applications of plant resistance against bacterial and fungal pathogens, exploring the forefront of research in basic and agricultural science. Plants have evolved an impressive array of defense mechanisms to counteract the threats posed by destructive microbial pathogens, and understanding these mechanisms is crucial for developing sustainable and effective strategies for crop protection. The focus of this Special Issue will be a spectrum of topics, ranging from the molecular and genetic basis of plant immunity to the application of cutting-edge technologies in enhancing plant disease resistance. For instance, key insights into the signaling pathways involved in plant defense responses, the role of secondary metabolites, and the manipulation of plant–microbe interactions are well welcomed. Furthermore, this Special Issue will explore the potential of biotechnological approaches, such as genetic engineering and synthetic biology, in developing crops with enhanced disease resistance traits. Additionally, the practical applications of these findings in the field of agriculture, including the development of resistant crop varieties and eco-friendly disease management strategies, are well encouraged. The collective knowledge presented in this Special Issue will not only advance our understanding of plant–pathogen interactions but also hold promise for addressing global challenges related to food security and sustainable agriculture. Researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike will find valuable insights and innovative solutions that contribute to the ongoing efforts in mitigating the impact of bacterial and fungal pathogens on crop productivity. 

Dr. Ye Xia
Dr. Chunquan Zhang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • plant disease resistance
  • functional mechanism
  • practical applications
  • plant health
  • food security
  • sustainable agriculture

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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22 pages, 4818 KiB  
Article
Integrated Transcriptomic and Metabolomic Analyses Reveal the Importance of the Terpenoid, Fatty Acid, and Flavonoid Pathways in Rice Cell Death and Defense
by Pengfei Bai, Yanfang Liu, Laisa Gomes-Dias, Rachel Combs-Giroir, Shaoxing Dai, Naeyeoung Choi, Yun Lin, Matthew Bernier, Emmanuel Hatzakis, Guo-Liang Wang and Joshua J. Blakeslee
Plants 2025, 14(5), 665; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants14050665 - 21 Feb 2025
Viewed by 746
Abstract
Lesion mimic mutants provide unique tools to investigate plant–pathogen interactions, often exhibiting hypersensitive responses in the absence of biotic or abiotic stresses. The overexpression of the S-domain receptor-like kinase gene, SPL11 cell-death suppressor 2 (SDS2), in rice leads [...] Read more.
Lesion mimic mutants provide unique tools to investigate plant–pathogen interactions, often exhibiting hypersensitive responses in the absence of biotic or abiotic stresses. The overexpression of the S-domain receptor-like kinase gene, SPL11 cell-death suppressor 2 (SDS2), in rice leads to constitutive programmed cell death and enhanced resistance to fungal and bacterial pathogens. However, the mechanisms underlying this broad-spectrum resistance remain unclear. This study integrates transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses of the SDS2-ACT mutant to uncover gene expression and metabolic shifts associated with disease resistance. To identify SDS2-specific physiological changes related to pathogen resistance, leaf tissues from the SDS2-ACT mutant and the Kitkaake WT line were subjected to both transcriptomic and non-targeted metabolic profiling. Transcriptomic analyses identified 1497 differentially expressed genes (DEGs), including up-regulated genes involved in terpenoid and flavonoid biosynthesis, phytohormone signaling, and defense-related pathways (including pathogenesis-related [PR] genes). Metabolomic profiling revealed significant alterations in the accumulation of several compound classes, including putative: terpenoids, phenylpropanoids, phytohormones, fatty acids, and sugars. These changes are likely correlated with the observed cell death and resistance phenotypes in the SDS2-ACT mutant. This study provides an overall landscape of the transcriptomic and metabolomic alterations in a lesion mimic mutant, identifying candidate defense-related genes and metabolites for functional analysis in rice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plant Resistance against Bacterial and Fungal Pathogens: Mechanisms and Applications)
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19 pages, 6151 KiB  
Article
Transcriptomic and Metabolomic Analyses of the Piz-t-Mediated Resistance in Rice against Magnaporthe oryzae
by Naeyeoung Choi, Xiao Xu, Pengfei Bai, Yanfang Liu, Shaoxing Dai, Matthew Bernier, Yun Lin, Yuese Ning, Joshua J. Blakeslee and Guo-Liang Wang
Plants 2024, 13(23), 3408; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13233408 - 4 Dec 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1232
Abstract
Magnaporthe oryzae causes devastating rice blast disease, significantly impacting rice production in many countries. Among the many known resistance (R) genes, Piz-t confers broad-spectrum resistance to M. oryzae isolates and encodes a nucleotide-binding site leucine-rich repeat receptor (NLR). Although Piz-t-interacting proteins and those [...] Read more.
Magnaporthe oryzae causes devastating rice blast disease, significantly impacting rice production in many countries. Among the many known resistance (R) genes, Piz-t confers broad-spectrum resistance to M. oryzae isolates and encodes a nucleotide-binding site leucine-rich repeat receptor (NLR). Although Piz-t-interacting proteins and those in the signal transduction pathway have been identified over the last decade, the Piz-t-mediated resistance has not been fully understood at the transcriptomic and metabolomic levels. In this study, we performed transcriptomic and metabolomic analyses in the Piz-t plants after inoculation with M. oryzae. The transcriptomic analysis identified a total of 15,571 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) from infected Piz-t and wild-type plants, with 2791 being Piz-t-specific. K-means clustering, GO term analysis, and KEGG enrichment pathway analyses of the total DEGs identified five groups of DEGs with distinct gene expression patterns at different time points post inoculation. GO term analysis of the 2791 Piz-t-specific DEGs revealed that pathways related to DNA organization, gene expression regulation, and cell division were highly enriched in the group, especially at early infection stages. The gene expression patterns in the transcriptomic datasets were well correlated with the metabolomic profiling. Broad-spectrum “pathway-level” metabolomic analyses indicated that terpenoid, phenylpropanoid, flavonoid, fatty acid, amino acid, glycolysis/TCA, and phenylalanine pathways were altered in the Piz-t plants after M. oryzae infection. This study offers new insights into the molecular dynamics of transcripts and metabolites in R-gene-mediated resistance against M. oryzae and provides candidates for enhancing rice blast resistance through the engineering of metabolic pathways. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plant Resistance against Bacterial and Fungal Pathogens: Mechanisms and Applications)
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29 pages, 4742 KiB  
Article
Plant Growth Promotion and Plant Disease Suppression Induced by Bacillus amyloliquefaciens Strain GD4a
by Piao Yang, Pu Yuan, Wenshan Liu, Zhenzhen Zhao, Matthew C. Bernier, Chunquan Zhang, Ashna Adhikari, Stephen Obol Opiyo, Lijing Zhao, Fredrekis Banks and Ye Xia
Plants 2024, 13(5), 672; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13050672 - 28 Feb 2024
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 3514
Abstract
Botrytis cinerea, the causative agent of gray mold disease (GMD), invades plants to obtain nutrients and disseminates through airborne conidia in nature. Bacillus amyloliquefaciens strain GD4a, a beneficial bacterium isolated from switchgrass, shows great potential in managing GMD in plants. However, the [...] Read more.
Botrytis cinerea, the causative agent of gray mold disease (GMD), invades plants to obtain nutrients and disseminates through airborne conidia in nature. Bacillus amyloliquefaciens strain GD4a, a beneficial bacterium isolated from switchgrass, shows great potential in managing GMD in plants. However, the precise mechanism by which GD4a confers benefits to plants remains elusive. In this study, an A. thaliana-B. cinerea-B. amyloliquefaciens multiple-scale interaction model was used to explore how beneficial bacteria play essential roles in plant growth promotion, plant pathogen suppression, and plant immunity boosting. Arabidopsis Col-0 wild-type plants served as the testing ground to assess GD4a’s efficacy. Additionally, bacterial enzyme activity and targeted metabolite tests were conducted to validate GD4a’s potential for enhancing plant growth and suppressing plant pathogens and diseases. GD4a was subjected to co-incubation with various bacterial, fungal, and oomycete pathogens to evaluate its antagonistic effectiveness in vitro. In vivo pathogen inoculation assays were also carried out to investigate GD4a’s role in regulating host plant immunity. Bacterial extracellular exudate (BEE) was extracted, purified, and subjected to untargeted metabolomics analysis. Benzocaine (BEN) from the untargeted metabolomics analysis was selected for further study of its function and related mechanisms in enhancing plant immunity through plant mutant analysis and qRT-PCR analysis. Finally, a comprehensive model was formulated to summarize the potential benefits of applying GD4a in agricultural systems. Our study demonstrates the efficacy of GD4a, isolated from switchgrass, in enhancing plant growth, suppressing plant pathogens and diseases, and bolstering host plant immunity. Importantly, GD4a produces a functional bacterial extracellular exudate (BEE) that significantly disrupts the pathogenicity of B. cinerea by inhibiting fungal conidium germination and hypha formation. Additionally, our study identifies benzocaine (BEN) as a novel small molecule that triggers basal defense, ISR, and SAR responses in Arabidopsis plants. Bacillus amyloliquefaciens strain GD4a can effectively promote plant growth, suppress plant disease, and boost plant immunity through functional BEE production and diverse gene expression. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plant Resistance against Bacterial and Fungal Pathogens: Mechanisms and Applications)
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Review

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25 pages, 1722 KiB  
Review
Status on Genetic Resistance to Rice Blast Disease in the Post-Genomic Era
by Rodrigo Pedrozo, Aron Osakina, Yixiao Huang, Camila Primieri Nicolli, Li Wang and Yulin Jia
Plants 2025, 14(5), 807; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants14050807 - 5 Mar 2025
Viewed by 1671
Abstract
Rice blast, caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, is a major threat to global rice production, necessitating the development of resistant cultivars through genetic improvement. Breakthroughs in rice genomics, including the complete genome sequencing of japonica and indica subspecies and the availability of various [...] Read more.
Rice blast, caused by Magnaporthe oryzae, is a major threat to global rice production, necessitating the development of resistant cultivars through genetic improvement. Breakthroughs in rice genomics, including the complete genome sequencing of japonica and indica subspecies and the availability of various sequence-based molecular markers, have greatly advanced the genetic analysis of blast resistance. To date, approximately 122 blast-resistance genes have been identified, with 39 of these genes cloned and molecularly characterized. The application of these findings in marker-assisted selection (MAS) has significantly improved rice breeding, allowing for the efficient integration of multiple resistance genes into elite cultivars, enhancing both the durability and spectrum of resistance. Pangenomic studies, along with AI-driven tools like AlphaFold2, RoseTTAFold, and AlphaFold3, have further accelerated the identification and functional characterization of resistance genes, expediting the breeding process. Future rice blast disease management will depend on leveraging these advanced genomic and computational technologies. Emphasis should be placed on enhancing computational tools for the large-scale screening of resistance genes and utilizing gene editing technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 for functional validation and targeted resistance enhancement and deployment. These approaches will be crucial for advancing rice blast resistance, ensuring food security, and promoting agricultural sustainability. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plant Resistance against Bacterial and Fungal Pathogens: Mechanisms and Applications)
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